Talk:Determination/@comment-33593652-20171108030451
TLDR: We can show from the lore determination is the literal "determination" human beings have within and as a power over Undertale as a video game by paying attention to some core concepts. As we can see in this post the synonymity that determination points to an ability to feel determined an ability to have free will is no secret. But the full meaning of determination in Undertale is a really easy concept if you are willing to be patient with it that a lot of people get wrong. The background you need is really just to understand metaphysics (free will) a little bit, but also a bit of computing skill. The commonly cited canon-empathy side of "determination" is consistent here, but that won't be the focus of discussion. But we also need to pay attention to a very subtle plot device and plot point, what metaphysical free will means for Undertale as a video game. On a simplification, determination is all of those things it is synonymous with: hope, free will, .etc as a property of human beings. Undertale is itself a containerized universe (within the video game). The characters, or at least some of them, have achieved an awareness that they are in a video game. You are the determining factor of how each system of timelines in that video game plays out, the hope you give the characters by the way things pan out in some timelines by your empathy and the free will you have to make choices other characters do not have, except Flowey who removes this from you once he achieves enough human souls. To illustrate some support of this, I take Flowey as some good evidence that NPC's which achieve determination have the power to also modify the game *save or reset* is what Flowey wants from the start and why he needs to kill Asgor. And that's it, really. "Determination" is a property which only comes from human-beings, in particular, the humans each time they fall down the hole in Undertale. Human beings only fall down the hole whenever a player starts a new game despite Chara is the first human to fall down but I think it's consistent to say Chara is you - though this is the assumption of this all. And Undertale is partially about how each story is determined by our free will terms of game play. Put together this means, Undertale is not only a game about how we as people / humans determine the state of a universe (whether we choose to represent ourselves as murderers and what that says about us is the further question), but also in a more narrative sense about the struggles of Flowey attaining the Determination being able to save/reset as a kind of metaphysical super-power in the context of the Undertale universe (the game). To illustrate the way in which it is metaphysical in terms of the context of the game, he gains the ability Flowey creates his own save and is represented as literally changes the properties of the universe he lives in by changing the details of Undertale.exe, In particular, if you pay close attention Flowey messes with process name and changes it to garbage as its running when he crashes your game for the first time. That pretty much sums up what determination means in the context of the game, it is the literal determination of people that we have towards the literal *being* of the Undertale universe and "timelines" as such within the game. This relationship between free will that we have as people in the *actual world* and how that allows us to make changes to Undertale as a product is not only a commonly cited and core component of Undertale's storytelling, represented as at least some kind of superpower clever use of file input and output indeed, but it is one I see people miss out on a lot in their explanations of the lore. It's also what plants crave.